


to be soft and to be vulnerable with you

by gayreids



Series: iron man bingo 2019 prompts [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Artist Steve Rogers, Autism, Autistic Character, Autistic Tony Stark, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Cuddles, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, actor Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 19:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17986991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayreids/pseuds/gayreids
Summary: being yanked back into his own body again and unbecoming whichever role he was playing to become himself was always hard.





	to be soft and to be vulnerable with you

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! this fills out the "no powers", "college/university", and "stevetony" squares on my bingo grid!! also tony is autistic and u can tear this belief from my cold dead hands. enjoy the story!!

the thing about looking at steve was that nobody ever really meant to, but once they did, they could never look away. if tony had to assign him an archetype within the shakespeare plays he so adored, steve would be the loyal best friend. at least, that’s what he thought when he’d first met the guy.

it turned out that steve poured his soul into every single thing he interacted with. it was like watching paint being mixed (and tony only really knew that because of how often he watched steve paint in the middle of the night when they were both too awake to sleep but tony was too tired to read out loud for the both of them), watching him out in the world. sometimes it seemed like steve gave so much of his heart away that he had none left for himself, so tony always made sure to spoil steve in the little ways: picking up his favourite coffee when he walked past the campus café, reciting hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy (steve’s favourite) whenever they were lying in bed together and steve was just a little too quiet and a little too restless for comfort, asking him about whichever art project he was working on just to see his face light up as he spoke a million miles a minute.

the thing about being a theatre student was that everything mattered. to tony, life was a production, and every emotion became the centre of his being, and every new person he met became an enigma to be unravelled into a plot point. it was because of this hell or glory mentality that he threw himself completely into steve (in more ways than one), ignoring whatever else followed. deciding to be vulnerable with steve, to peel back the layers of bravado that were typical of an actor but unhealthily prominent in him, was the best decision he’d made in his life.

however, the downfall of his all or nothing attitude was that he had a debilitating fear of failure, which was why he was sat on his kitchen floor at 3am, combing through shakespeare’s words like they contained the secrets of the universe (which they probably didn’t, but they contained the secrets of graduating at the top of his class, and they may well have been the same thing to tony). sipping his fourth coffee of the early morning, tony grimaced and pointed at one of the books lying open. the gesture helped him focus his mind, literally pointing out what he should be focused on. _julius caesar_ was lying open on the floor, glaring at him for not doing his readings earlier. tony loved doing a degree in drama and he was proud of his commitment to it, but damn, it would be nice to have a full night of sleep.

he had two copies of the play sat side by side, one annotated and one not. having one unannotated play helped him focus on the words themselves, without the thoughts of his previous selves littering the page. as a person, he’d changed drastically from when he’d first entered the university, and even his interpretations of texts and how he performed them showed this. his brutus was now a quiet man whose fate had gotten swept away from him in a fit of impulse, instead of the arrogant right hand man tony had played him as at the beginning of his degree. keeping a copy of the play that he’d been annotating since his first year was more sentimentality than anything else; big chunks of the writing had become unintelligible, paragraphs overlapping and pen bleeding through the paper, and some of the annotations barely made sense (either tony had been writing while his brain was on auto pilot or he’d been writing while he was drunk). he raked his hands through his hair as his eyes darted across the page, ignoring the meter of the prose in favour of just getting the information into his head. he could hear his voice trembling as he became brutus, he could see his hands covered in stage blood from the assassination of caesar, and he could feel his face creasing as he heard the line “the fault, my dear brutus, is not in our stars / but in ourselves,” for the millionth time since he’d started studying the play but hitting just as hard every time he heard it, as if every single time was the first and he was collapsing under the weight of the english language all over again.

the door to his apartment swung open before being quietly shut. the small disturbance was enough to pull him out of his thoughts, and he couldn’t help but feel irrationally angry at whoever had interrupted his flow. being yanked back into his own body again and unbecoming whichever role he was playing to become _himself_ was always hard. it never got any easier, and tony wanted to know who had pulled him apart so soon after he’d started (well, not soon, but too soon for tony to be fully ready for it yet).

“tone?” steve’s voice called out, cutting through the air and tony’s rotten mood like a knife. in its place came exhaustion. he’d been studying for _hours_ , and now he’d stopped, he realised just how tired he was.

“in here, stevie wonder,” tony replied, his voice ragged. he heard steve’s footsteps falter slightly straight after he’d replied, and that was either because he’d broken his routine (usually if his routine was altered, it’d send him straight into a meltdown) by being in his kitchen instead of in his bedroom or it was because he sounded like he’d attacked his throat with sandpaper.

“hey, tones. pepper called me and said that you were sitting on the kitchen floor, and that she’d tried to speak to you but you didn’t hear her,” steve explained softly. tony glanced at the clock opposite him and the hour hand was pointed straight at number eight, with the minute hand pointed at five minutes past.

“it was- what time is it?” tony asked, still under the impression that it was three o’clock in the morning like it had been the last time he’d checked the clock. _julius caesar_ mocked him from the floor.

“it’s five past nine. the clocks changed today, so we got an hour stolen away from us,” steve replied. the little crease between his eyebrows got deeper.

“it was three in the morning, stevie. i don’t-“ tony shut his mouth, feeling an urge to wring and flap his arms at shoulder height just like he did every time he got confused and went from fully- to partially-verbal.  
steve felt absolutely helpless, even if he tried his best to dedicate all five feet four inches of himself to taking care of tony. it was obvious that he needed help, and he’d seen tony like _this_ before, only admittedly for a couple seconds before he inevitably whisked himself away to deal with whatever it was alone. they’d never spoken about it because tony went cold the second steve tried to pry whatever it was out of him, no matter how much he said that his only intention was to help, so steve was left woefully uninformed and unprepared.

great.

pepper had sounded worried over the phone. she’d said that if tony was too far gone to hear her, she couldn’t try to touch him to get his attention, which steve tentatively agreed with. she’d asked him whether he had some time spare after his 8am history of art lecture to keep tony company because she had to leave to go to her theory of math classes. there were different modules back to back all day, and all of them were compulsory. steve had the nagging feeling that there was _something_ he was missing, but he didn’t prolong the conversation, walking straight from his lecture hall to tony’s apartment to let himself in with a spare key.

the guy was shaking on the floor. he was wearing his glasses (which he never did, unless he was so tired that he couldn’t expend the extra energy needed to squint and make out whatever needed to be seen at any one particular moment). tony looked like he was either going to cry, punch something, throw up, or possibly all three at the same time.

“babe, are you in physical pain? hold up your right hand for ‘yes’ or your left hand for ‘no’,” steve tried, remembering how tony had cut himself off in the middle of speaking like he’d suddenly become unable to do so.

tony held up his left hand before looking at it like he’d never seen it before and putting up his right. he changed his mind again and put his left hand up. he looked like he was about to cry.

“do i need to call an ambulance? right for ‘yes’, left for ‘no’.”

tony confidently held up his left hand. at least steve could now rule out any serious injuries, but that left the much bigger question of _so, what the fuck is wrong, then_?

“is there anything i can do? same as before.”

tony’s right hand slowly raised from where it rested on his lap. he was now avoiding eye contact even more than he usually did, and he was doing it more obviously, too.

“does it involve me staying or leaving?”

tony stared over steve’s shoulder for a second (the closest he was going to be able to get to eye contact), unsure of how to answer. he was now entirely non-verbal, but steve’s presence had probably snatched him from the jaws of the anxiety attack he was sure he would’ve had if he was left alone with _caesar_ any longer. looking back, even though he was nowhere near clear minded yet, he knew he would have spiralled until he collapsed on the floor and would have needed to actually call an ambulance. seriously, tony worried about _himself_ sometimes, but as long as he let his neuroses spill into the characters he played without letting it rule any other part of his life, he’d be _fine_.

“oh, sorry. right hand for me to stay and left hand for me to go. if you want me to leave, that’s fine,” steve said evenly, shifting his weight slightly between his feet.

tony raised his right hand before holding it out to steve, willing for his boyfriend to hold it, and then to hold him, until he was ready to put himself back together and face the world again.

steve looked from tony’s palm to his face, seeing the poorly veiled _want_ there. tony usually either hated or craved touch, and it was something that steve had gotten used to over the year and a half they’d been together, but seeing him looking so _starving_ for it broke steve’s heart. it made steve want to punch every single person who had ever even had a single bad _thought_ about tony in their heads before. the feeling that was taking root inside steve’s body was one that started revolutions and vindicated martyrs and created avengers out of mere mortals.

but for that moment, steve stretched his arms that felt so full of electricity and fire and wrapped them around tony, soft and protective and full of every feeling he couldn’t articulate.

tony smiled with tears of relief falling down his face. he felt _content_ , as if something he didn’t have a name for had slotted right into the place in his chest where a crushing void usually resided. he knew it wouldn’t be forever and he knew that steve couldn’t personally take all of his pain away but it was enough just to be held by him. steve was running his bony fingers through tony’s hair, alternating between whispering “i love you” so many times that the soundwaves penetrated his soul and sitting in silence, rocking him and tony back and forth. tony guided steve until he was sat in his lap.

they, a tiny art student who dressed like he was fifty years older than he really was and an only slightly bigger theatre student who felt everything as if it was larger than life, were sat on tony’s kitchen floor. their limbs were intertwined, and it was the closest and most intimate they’d been with all of their clothes on. tony’s right hand was resting on the back of steve’s head, and his left was looped around steve’s hips. steve’s arms were wrapped around tony’s middle, hands slayed open on the other man’s back and pressing down as if to keep them both anchored to each other.  
all was right in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at @fuckmarvel on tumblr!! also, please comment about whether you'd like to see a part two or a sequel (and maybe prompt me on what to write?) because i'm kind of on the fence abt giving this a part 2. i hope y'all are having a lovely day!!


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